


Grace

by StrangeMischief



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2020-10-26 09:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20740091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangeMischief/pseuds/StrangeMischief
Summary: “Pain’s an old friend.”





	Grace

**Author's Note:**

> As always, enjoy :3

_ Grace _

“Why can’t you send someone else in your place?” Stephen groaned, pulling Tony tighter against his bare chest.

“My presence alone seals the deal,” Tony replied, with false seriousness.

Stephen huffed in good humor but otherwise did not comment.

Tony sighed and twisted around in his boyfriend’s tight embrace. “It’s nothing, babe,” he soothed, running a hand across Stephen’s cheek. “Perfectly safe.”

“It’s a war zone,” Stephen deadpanned coldly.

“Big deal. _Rhodes_ is coming. I show up. Blow up a small mountain. Shake some hands. Fly home. _Easy.”_

“It’s a _war zone, _Tony_._”

“You know, you’re cute when you worry,” Tony teased, his bourbon eyes shining with adoration.

Stephen snorted, but still glowed under Tony’s warm gaze. “Then I must look gorgeous right now.”

Tony grinned and pushed against Stephen, rolling them, so he straddled the other man.

“Oh, irresistible, Doc. Simply irresistible,” he hummed in agreement as his mouth descended.

“It’s only a few days,” Stephen mumbled against eager lips, his tone making it more a question than a statement.

“Only a few days,” Tony reassured as he flung the bedspread to the floor. “Can’t miss our special day, after all.

Stephen grinned mischievously. “I don’t think I can make it that long.”

“Ah, don’t worry, Stephen,” Tony growled huskily against his lover’s ear. “You’ll be feeling this until you see me again.”

\---

_There was an explosion. Gunfire. Fear wound around his throat like a noose, blocking the air from his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He needed to breathe. He needed…Stephen. He needed Stephen. Where was Stephen?_

Tony jerked upright, gasping in agony as pain shot across his chest. A gentle hand pushed against his shoulder. “Be still!” a male voice demanded softly but firmly. The hand moved from his shoulder and down to his arm, which had become tangled in what felt like wires. Was he in the hospital? Had he been found?

“Stephen?” Tony rasped, squinting at his dark surroundings.

“No.” A light flicked on. A balding, bespectacled man came into view. “I am Yinsen.”

Tony’s eyes darted up and down the man before taking in the room – if it could be called that. On the four sides where walls should have stood was hard, dusty rock. He was underground. In a cave. _Underground._ The noose reappeared, quickly winding its way up his aching torso before continuing to creep towards his neck. “Oh my god,” he croaked, struggling to sit up, to find a way out.

“You can’t move that quickly! The magnet is too unstable!” Yinsen frantically pushed down on Tony’s arms, easily overpowering the weakened man.

“What…magnet?” Tony wheezed between ragged breaths.

Yinsen grimaced and slowly folded back the woven blanket that covered Tony’s battered body. “There was so much shrapnel in your heart…I-I did the best I could.”

\---

Stephen’s eyes darted back and forth between the clock in the dashboard and the dark, winding road ahead. He was late. He _hated _being late. If only he hadn’t spent so much time on the damn flowers…But it didn’t matter. It would be special. It would be worth it.

_…right?_

Apprehension and doubt gnawed at his chest, and his gaze darted back to the clock. He didn’t have time to worry about it. Tony couldn’t be more than five hours out from home. It was too late to change his mind; too late to turn back and undo all his preparations.

Thankfully, the sharp ring of his cell phone broke through his thoughts. He blindly swiped at the surface of his phone, silently hoping it wasn’t Tony. He’d know something was up in an instant and then all his careful planning would have been for naught.

“Mr. Strange?” The speaker's voice was detached and female. Not Tony. “Mr. Stephen Strange? This is-”

“Dr. Strange!” he interrupted irritably, pulling sharply around a steep curve.

“Please, sir, I’m calling in regard to Tony Stark.”

Stephen decided to dismiss the coil of fear that had sprouted in his stomach. “He’s overseas,” he snapped, fingers tightening around the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “Who are you? How did you get this number?”

“Mr. Strange, I’m calling on behalf of the United States Airforce.”

Stephen sucked in sharply. _No. No. No. _

“Because?” He didn’t know why he bothered to ask. The coil had grown and was creeping up his chest. He could already feel the panic setting in. He knew_. _He _knew. _

“Sir, I’m sorry to inform you that the convoy transporting Mr. Stark from the demonstration was ambushed.”

His mouth fell open. His body slacked back against the seat. The road ahead faded from view. One moment he felt like the world had come to a standstill. All that existed was this moment. This shock. This disbelief. This _agony. _

And then the moment was over, and the world spun. A high-pitched squeal pierced his ears. The echoing crunch of bending metal pounded in his head.

“We have reason…”

His chest slammed against the steering wheel, knocking out the breath he had been holding. _No_, he realized. 

“…to believe that-”

The windshield shattered. Millions of sparkling shards glistened in the moonlight like diamonds. They sliced his nose. Split his chin. Dug into his cheeks. Blotches of garnet red splashed across his crisp, white shirt. _Not the world. _

“Mr. Strange?”

The front of the car jolted inwards, folding like an accordion. His hands shot out without his consent, the instinctive need to protect his body overriding his own conscious demand to draw them closer to his chest.

“Mr. Strange!”

And then there was pain. In his head. In his hands. Pain so great it almost rivaled the one in his heart. He tried to breathe, but there was no air. He tried to move, but his body was frozen. The world was spinning only it wasn’t. _It was the car. _

“Dr. Stran-!” The phone flew out the gap where the passenger window had once been.

The world hadn’t spun. It hadn’t even stopped. It was worse than that. So much worse.

The world had _ended. _

\---

The escape plan had been going relatively smoothly until Yinsen was hit. Until Yinsen was dying.

“Come on, buddy.” Tony huffed as he tried to haul the other man up with the clunky silver hands of his suit.

“No,” Yinsen whispered, “You go. You-You need to get back.”

“So do you!” Tony snapped back. “Your family-”

“Is dead,” the elder man rasped as he struggled to reach inside his jacket pocket. “But yours…” Yinsen withdrew his hand, a tangle of twine, fashioned into a necklace, clenched in his fist. At the bottom of the loop was a simple silver band, worn by blast marks and thin scrapings. “Yours is waiting,” Yinsen mumbled.

Even the bulky armor Tony wore couldn’t conceal the fact that his hand shook as he reached out for the ring he’d thought was lost to the Afghan sands. “Where was it?” he managed to choke out.

“Your suit pocket. I managed to take it before _they_ found it. The box could not be saved.” Tony wanted to yell at Yinsen to not sound so regretful. That he’d done enough. _More _than enough.

“Thank you,” he choked out as he dropped the necklace over his neck. “Thank you.”

Yinsen smiled. “Thank _you, _Tony Stark.”

\---

The only movement Stephen had made in the past twenty minutes was when he pulled the tattered MIT sweatshirt a little tighter around his thin form. It did little to keep the rain from seeping through the fabric, but he wasn’t too concerned. The large, empty house in front of him was the sole focus of his attention. The house he once called home. The house _they _had once called home.

He wondered what would happen to it. He had no claim. It’d likely be sold by one of Tony’s many lawyers. Or by Stane, who had seemed to have overtaken much of what Tony did…or perhaps _had_ owned.

Stephen scrubbed his teary face with one scarred and quivering hand “I want to believe, Tony,” he whispered into the darkness. “I want to believe it all. That you’ll come back. That my hands will get better. That everything-” he choked, “That everything will be okay.”

“I have to do it,” Stephen sobbed, looking at the vacant building. “There’s a place…I have to go.” The broken man cast one last look at his once-home and whispered a final, broken, “I love you.”

And then he was gone.

\---

For some time, Tony wondered if he’d died in the cave with Yinsen. If this was hell. It certainly felt like it. There was sand and heat and heat and sand and _heat. _The soles of his feet had long since gone numb to the burning ground beneath them. His lips were split after hours of going without water. His exposed shoulders blistered under the intensity of the sun.

But all he thought of was Stephen.

Stephen’s deep laugh. Stephen’s eyes – colored like a Monet painting. Stephen’s lithe fingers dancing across ivory keys. Stephen singing _Try to Remember_ terribly off key.

Just…_Stephen. _

Stephen had to know he was okay. Stephen had to know he was sorry for missing their five-year anniversary. Stephen had to know he loved him; that he wanted to be his _forever. _

Tony clenched the soot-covered ring that rested against the gleaming arc reactor in his chest. He’d make it. For Stephen. For them.

\---

Stephen slept on dirty the stoop in Katmandu, determined to prove his dedication. He pulled the hood of the MIT sweater over his disheveled hair and inhaled deeply. He still had one thing to his name. And even after all these months, Tony’s cologne still clung to the soft fabric. That alone made it far more valuable than anything else he could possibly own.

He shoved his bandaged hands into the front pocket of the sweatshirt and fingered the cool piece of metal he’d carried with him since before Tony…disappeared. _Perhaps_, he thought, _I have two things left to my name. _

The door at his feet abruptly swung open to reveal a short, stout man that sported a deep frown and carried a thick book.

“Come.”

\---

Tony Stark had held it together in the cave. He had held it together as he trekked across the scorching sand. He held it together in the rescue chopper when Rhodey said he hadn’t heard from Stephen, and at the hospital when Pepper said Stephen had been in an accident, and in the limo on the way home when Happy said that his boyfriend hadn’t been by the house since he was discharged.

He held it together as he listened to his voicemail in the backseat of the car to find dozens of hysterical messages from Christine.

Christine crying that Stephen had flipped his car off the road, that his hands were shattered beyond repair. “Where are you?” her voice screeched in the message. “He needs you!”

Christine shakily saying that Stephen had holed himself up back at his old apartment in the city. That he spent day and night researching surgeries and contacting doctors. “Please,” she sobbed, “I know you’re missing, but you _can’t_ be dead. _Please. _He _needs _you. What do I do? What if you don’t come back?”

Christine choking out that Stephen had disappeared off the face of the earth. “He’s just gone! I tried, but he’s gone. I’m so sorry, Tony.”

Tony Stark held it together until he opened the front door to find a trail of wilted rose petals winding across the foyer and up the stairs. Until he opened the bedroom door to find dozens of candles that had never been lit. Until his trembling fingers picked up a simple cream card that read, “Welcome home. Happy five years,” in Stephen’s familiar scrawl.

Only then, did Tony Stark finally let himself fall to the floor in a broken heap. Only then, did Tony Stark finally let himself cry.

\---

Stephen carefully patted his freshly-shaved face, admiring his handiwork. He never thought he’d be one for facial hair, but he had to admit that it suited him. _Tony would have had a field day. _Grief washed over him at the thought.

Careful but trembling fingers reached out for the delicate silver band that sat next to the mirror. It was badly scratched and slightly dented on one side. A deep gash from where surgical scissors had cut through his clothes marked the ring on the opposite curve. Scuffs from being carried around without the velvet box adorned it in its entirety.

And yet, it was still beautiful.

Stephen slipped it over his right index finger, smiling softly at the one connection he’d permitted himself to have from the outside world. The future it once represented. The blinding love he had felt when he bought it, and he still felt every time he slipped it over his finger.

With a sigh, he moved to exit the room. Karl would abandon their training session if he was kept waiting too long.

\---

Tony searched night and day and then some more. He was going to find Stephen. He was going to find him, drag him into an embrace, and kiss him until one of them grew faint. Then he’d marry him.

Then he’d _kill _him.

But until then, J.A.R.V.I.S combed through hacked video footage. Rhodey kept an ear to the ground whenever he went overseas. Pepper ran Stark Industries and warded off nosey reporters.

For his part, Tony searched through computer databases until he hit a wall. And then he’d take the Iron Man suit out for a flight and peer at the faces below, hoping his AI could pick Stephen out of the crowd. Then he searched online some more. Rinse, wash, repeat.

And then Obadiah ripped the arc reactor from his chest.

\---

“Dormammu!” Stephen dearly hoped he sounded confident. “I’ve come to bargain.”

“You’ve come to die!” the dimensional being howled with laughter, blasting Stephen with bright purple energy so strong not a trace of his body remained.

“Dormammu!” Stephen greeted, smiling despite the tingling pain running down his spine. “I’ve come to bargain.”

Again, the being laughed. “You’ve come to…” Dormammu trailed off and narrowed his glittering eyes. “What is this?”

Stephen waved his hands in front of his chest, displaying the Eye. “Your eternity. This moment. Forever.”

“Then you shall suffer, in agony, forever,” the beast grinned, hoping to find hesitancy in the sorcerer.

Stephen smiled sadly and brushed his thumb across the worse-for-wear ring he always wore.

“Pain’s an old friend.”

\---

Tony dug his nails into the grout of the tiled floor and hauled himself forward. The still blackened band slipped from beneath the collar of his shirt as he struggled. With each heave forward, it clanked softly against the hard surface below. It was no more than a simple chiming, but with each sound, Tony heard Stephen offer a whisper of encouragement.

** _Chime! _ ** _Fight._

** **

** _Chime! _ ** _You can do it. _

** _Chime! _ ** _I love you. _

Ashen fingers clawed desperately at the lab table above where the encased arc reactor sat. He needed to live. Stephen was waiting. 

\---

“Enough!” Dormammu screeched before Stephen could land back on the familiar rock. “I surrender!”

“You will leave, with your zealots, and never return?” Stephen asked, arching a brow. The simple movement felt like a branding iron had been pressed to his face. Though the pain of his endless deaths lingered, his features gave little away. He could not show weakness. Not now, when he was so close.

Dormammu scrutinized him critically before drawing back. “It will be done,” he rasped.

\---

Tony stood at the podium, peering at the eager reporters below. “The truth is…it’s…I am Iron Man.”

\---

Stephen carefully turned a small, color-changing vase over in his hands as he listened to an uncharacteristically chatty Wong prattle on about how much better being at the New York Sanctum would be than staying at Kamar-Taj. “The sandwiches are better here; you cannot disagree with that!” Wong smiled. “And to think, we’ll be living close to Iron Man!”

“Who?” Stephen mumbled half-heartedly, more interested in the magical artifact than Wong’s latest celebrity idol.

“Iron Man, Strange! We’re not monks! Keep up with current events!”

“My apologies. What’s so special about _Iron Man?_”

“Besides that he just revealed himself as Tony Stark?”

The vase shattered across the floor.

“What did you just say?”

\---

“Sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S’ smooth voice called moments after Tony slipped through the front door.

Tony waved weakly at the ceiling as he threw his suit jacket over the back of the soda. “Hold that thought, for now, buddy.”

“Sir-”

“Whatever nasty messages Rhodey has left me can wait for later.”

“It entails Dr. Strange, sir.”

Tony’s head whipped upwards, towards one of the many cameras installed in the ceiling. “Yes?” he whispered, hope blooming in his chest.

“He’s approaching the door, sir.”

The bell rang.

\---

Stephen sobbed as Tony crushed him against his shorter frame.

Tony wept as Stephen whispered dozens of apologizes for disappearing, for not waiting longer.

Stephen’s heart burst when Tony pulled the front of the ratty MIT sweatshirt down and told him to never apologize again between hungry kisses.

Tony stretched up and cupped Stephen’s impossibly angular cheeks and tearfully gasped, “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Stephen choked out, “And I thought I’d never see _you_.”

\---

On his left ring finger, Tony wore a slightly dented silver band with nicks from surgical scissors and scrapes from twisting metal and shattered glass. Occasionally it would glow from all the interdimensional energy it was battered with by Dormammu.

\---

On his left ring finger, Stephen wore a scuffed-up band that had once been entirely silver but was now mostly scorched by black soot from a large blast. It was scuffed from dinging against rocks and tile. One small strip was particularly worn away by the constant friction of tightly woven twine rubbing back and forth.

\---

“Stephen,” Tony groaned out, half-asleep.

“Hmph?” his husband moaned back.

“If you disappear again I’ll kill you.”

Stephen let out a huff of tired laughter that rustled the back of Tony’s hair. “I think the same can be said for you.”

“Touché, babe. Touché.”

\---

And everything was okay. Everything was _marvelous. _


End file.
